PSU license plates to be on Missouri roads soon

May 01, 2012 12:00AM

For many years, Pitt State alumni and friends in Kansas have been able to express their Gorilla pride by purchasing a distinctive PSU license plate. Now alumni and friends in Missouri can do the same.

Johnna Schremmer, director of alumni and constituent relations at PSU, announced this week that more than enough applications have been submitted to make the plate, complete with a color Gorilla logo, available to Missouri motorists. PSU is the first university in Kansas to have a specialty license plate available in Missouri.

Schremmer said the first Missouri PSU license plates are expected on the road within the next two or three months.

“The PSU plates have been very popular in Kansas,” Schremmer said. “We got our first Kansas plates in 1999 and currently we have more than 1,700 on the road. We have almost 10,000 PSU alumni who live in Missouri and we’ve heard from many of them that they would like to have the option of purchasing a specialized PSU plate when they became available.”

That process, Schremmer said, began in 2010 with an application for a specialty license plate to the Missouri Legislature. Tom Flanigan, a member of the Missouri House of Representatives, sponsored the application. The PSU request was approved in 2011 and the Office of Alumni and Constituent Relations set about lining up the first 200 applicants for the plate, which were required for the state to start production.

Dr. Rob Herron, a Missouri resident, was president of the PSU Alumni Association when the drive to collect the 200 applications began.

“I was one of the first to sign up,” Herron said. “I know there are many loyal PSU alumni in the Show-Me State who are as eager as I am to get our PSU plates and show our Gorilla pride wherever we drive.”

Schremmer said that because the time-consuming work of getting the approval for the plate and lining up the initial applicants is now done, it will be a simple matter for any Missouri resident to purchase a Pitt State license plate.

“From now forward, anyone in Missouri with a vehicle can get a plate by contacting our office first then the state,” Schremmer said.